Rainbow House

Rainbow House is a former School Board offices, now a nursery school, dating from approximately 1890. It was designed by Edmund Kirby, architect, of Liverpool, for the Walton-On-The-Hill School Board. The building is constructed of red Ruabon brick with moulded brick and ashlar sandstone dressings, prominent chimneys with elaborate corbelled caps and decorated shafts, and a slate roof with red clay crested ridges.

The building is an L-shaped complex situated at the west end of a roughly triangular plot, originally containing offices, school board offices, a boardroom, and caretaker's accommodation.

The principal south elevation, facing Arnot Street, has five bays. A wide, off-centre entrance is set within a deep, stepped, moulded surround with a shallow segmental-arched head. Above the entrance is a wide storey band, and the first floor features paired cross windows. A gablet, flanked by wide chimney stacks and incorporating a three-light window with flanking blind lancets, sits above. To the right of the entrance bay are two further bays with three-light windows. Attic openings lack transoms and are located within hipped dormer roof projections topped with finials. A single-storey range extends eastward, linking with the adjacent Arnot Street School. To the right of the entrance bay is a two-storey bay that connects with a faceted corner turret, incorporating three-light windows in ashlar surrounds, effectively creating a two-storey canted bay window below a low, faceted spire. The west elevation, facing County Road, has wide ground and first-floor openings in the return bay, and a wide, expressed, stepped chimney stack to the north gable.

The interior was not inspected.

The building was constructed as the administrative headquarters of the Walton-On-The-Hill School Board, forming part of a larger, integrated school complex developed between 1883 and 1891. The boardroom was located on the first floor, with the board offices below, and accommodation was provided for a caretaker.

Rainbow House forms a group with the adjacent Arnot Street School.

The former School Board Offices are of special architectural interest as a well-preserved and rare example of purpose-built administrative facilities for a significant Liverpool School Board. They were designed by an eminent 19th-century Liverpool architect and are part of one of the most extensive and ambitious School Board complexes completed in a city recognised for the quality of its school buildings constructed after the 1870 Elementary Education Act.